


Diorama

by PlumTea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, Dream Sequences, Final Haikyuu Quest, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 02:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15087230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/pseuds/PlumTea
Summary: Iwaizumi says that he's on their side, but everyone knows he used to serve as a knight of the Demon King. To Kenma, it doesn't matter how nice Iwaizumi is-- he can't be trusted.





	Diorama

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Final Haikyuu Quest Zine](https://twitter.com/haikyuquestzine)! I had a blast with this project, and thank you to everyone who supported it!

It always starts out small.

Too many glances towards the Demon King’s castle. More familiarity with magic than is befitting of a mundane warrior.

Realistically speaking, Iwaizumi isn’t someone they want to get rid of. He’s the one that barters with the innkeepers because nobody else has the people skills. The calluses on his palm speak of years practicing with tools of war. Monsters that even Kageyama’s arrows have a hard time with go down under Iwaizumi’s blade. He knows how to calm the crew in a few words, keeping them up when resources are low and the weather is sour.

All the charm in the world doesn’t change the fact that Iwaizumi was part of the Imperial Guard. Even if Kageyama hadn’t let that slip one day, there was still the royal insignia on the blade of Iwaizumi’s holy sword. Hinata accepted Iwaizumi regardless, and Kenma respects that.

Kenma also knows that Hinata’s way too nice for his own good. Hinata believes in the best in people. He couldn’t keep this ragtag party together otherwise. There’s Kageyama, but all his time leading platoons didn’t do much for his concealment skills. Iwaizumi though, he’s smart, he’s nice, but he’s hiding something. He can’t be trusted.

 

* * *

 

“Wounds are healed. Poison’s gone.” Aone checks Iwaizumi’s temperature. “Fever isn’t.”

Iwaizumi’s latest clash with a zhenniao was a battle filled with sharp talons and poisonous feathers. Even with Aone’s spells and Kenma’s draughts to neutralize the venom, Iwaizumi’s body is still on the defensive. He lies on the ground, shaking in a fit of delirium.

“What can we do?” Hinata asks Aone.

“We wait.”

Kageyama lurks in the distance, concern beneath his frown. Hinata flits around, unsure of what to say. It’s getting late. They’ll have to make camp here and let Iwaizumi sleep the fever away.

“Kenma?” Hinata leans in, whispering, “Do you think you can...”

He’s a mage, not a healer like Aone. “Can’t do much else,” Kenma mumbles, ignoring Hinata’s worried eyes and the sweat beading on Iwaizumi’s brow.

“I know. But do you think you can try?”

An idea hits Kenma like a bolt of lightning. He bends his head, letting the folds of his robes hide a gulp. “I might be able to do something.”

“Really?” Hinata squeezes Kenma’s hands, lighting up from the inside out. “You’re the best!”

“Right. Right…”

Back at the academy, a colleague had boasted about having refined a dream seer spell. Instead of watching from afar, the caster could enter their target’s dream, looking deep into secrets that they didn’t want to be known. Kenma listened to his bragging for a while, up until the Assessment Committees got involved and the mage was forced to have his memory wiped.

“Moral of the story is,” Kuroo had said in that voice that teetered between teasing and all-knowing, “don’t tell everyone what you can do.”

Once everyone else is asleep, Kenma smears sleeping dust over Iwaizumi’s forehead and eyelids. Gripping his staff tight, he weaves the incantation out of his memory and through his mouth. The words spin a whirl of smoke, the shifting cloud padding around the knight’s still form and into Kenma’s head.

He dives.

 

_The hall is long and narrow, all shadow with some dying torchlights. Kenma knows the castle but not all of it, not the dungeons or the passages that the servants whisper of. Even with the cool weather, his body still aches from a long day of sword training._

_“You work harder than everyone else. There’s no war, you know.”_

_“I know,” Kenma says. Sparring that day was rough. He’s finally strong enough to lift a longsword, but his arrows kept missing. “A guard can’t be staring at birds all day.”_

_“Future guard,” the voice corrects, attached to a boy. His eyes are tired from a week’s worth of studying. Two small nubs poke out from beneath the waves of his hair. “My future guard.”_

_“For when you become the worst king.”_

_Oikawa’s voice thins out as he whines, “I’m gonna be a great king!”_

In a room only lit by candles, Oikawa is gripping his hand tight. Soft against his calluses, ink stains on the sides. Warm with the murmur of magic. “Two halves of one soul. Mine and yours.” He wonders what that means, but he already knows, deep down.

_It’s the first time someone so young has entered the Imperial Guard. In the mirror, he looks at his armor, white metal against turquoise fabric._

_“Iwa-chan.” Oikawa is smiling at him. His limbs are longer, and he’s more filled out. Mature, even if Kenma knows he won’t eat anything that’s not full of sugar. “Now that I’m king, you’re my knight.” The touch on his shoulder is too gentle to just be between a lord and his servant. “Loyal to me, forever.”_

_He’s proud, down to his bones, that the boy who pored over tomes until the candles melted down will soon have that green velvet crown on his head. Kenma reaches out to touch Oikawa’s face, and even though Oikawa huffs, he doesn’t move away. He relaxes into Kenma’s hand, soft hair brushing Kenma’s fingertips._

_Those horns have curled up some more. Kenma asks, but Oikawa just says, “They were always like that.”_

Only half of the generals can handle every type of weapon, and none have as accurate marksmanship as Kageyama. Kenma stands by Oikawa’s side as they survey the generals’ practices. An arrow into another, into another. Kageyama looks up to his king with a sparkle of admiration and a wish to learn magic that he’ll confess later. “A hurricane,” Oikawa says, even-toned. “One that’s going to blow me out.”

_Oikawa is heart and brain in one moment and volcano the next. Fire greater than a dragon’s, burning the villages suspected of rebellion. Blaze and smoke and ram’s horns. Kenma hears the desperate screams of those trapped and sees a stranger by his side._

Oikawa is standing before his throne, horns curled around his crown. Kenma’s heart surges. “Oikawa.” The stairs to the throne go up, up, and no matter how many steps Kenma takes, he only gets further away. “Oikawa!” Again, louder, but Oikawa doesn’t hear him.

_The last night of them, Kenma knows, aches deep down. Oikawa is his king, forever. But when he looks into Oikawa’s red eyes, all he sees is stone, not flesh._

_“Who are you?”_

_Oikawa is staring at him, not at Iwaizumi’s skin,_ him _._

_“Get out.” Oikawa’s words are ice, unlike the hum of heat across the floor. The stone shudders, speckled with embers. As the world melts around him, Kenma mutters, “It’s just a dream.”_

The clouds were orange that day too, even washed out with smoke as the stars came tumbling down. The skies brought the Demon King’s fury down on the academy, tearing into stone and setting tapestries ablaze. Kenma dashed through the halls, forced out of his room for the first time since orientation, charred flesh in his nose and smoke biting at his throat. Even Kuroo’s bleached fire rat robe couldn’t fully ward off the heat. He’s checked the labs and found nothing but bodies. It hurts to breathe, so he can only wheeze out his best friend’s name. The fire rages, rages.

_“Just a dream,” he insists as the flames claw up the castle walls._

 

Kenma surfaces, air swelling in his lungs. His staff slips out of his hand, rolling a few paces away. Exhaustion chews at every nerve. Iwaizumi is turning over, but some color has returned to his face. Still asleep, just like everyone else should be.

Something shifts to his left. Maybe Kageyama, doing a nightly patrol. Deceiving Kageyama shouldn’t be hard, all he needs to do is talk too many details for Kageyama to keep up.

Except Kageyama doesn’t have red eyes. Kenma goes statue-stiff.

A shadow is half blended into the trees. Black mist fans out from where its legs should be, rustling the grass as it drifts closer. It curls around Iwaizumi, going through the motions of someone checking for breath. Hovering, but never touching. Clawed hands cup around Iwaizumi’s face, humming without a mouth.

Kenma does a quick cost-benefit analysis of not running deep into the woods, away from the shadow and a quest too big for him. It’s a lingering attachment taken form, not a spy. Even if it clung to Iwaizumi, it isn’t solid enough to relay information back to Oikawa.

A soft, barely audible breath escapes Kenma’s mouth.

The shadow’s head snaps up. Fury eyes lock on him.

It’s upon him in an instant, needling into his skin and searing every nerve. Misty hands tighten his throat until it’s no wider than a straw. In the swirl of the shadow’s rage, Kenma’s battered through its fragmented memory. Politics and long days studying relaxed by a few simple words. Adoration that swells redder with its eyes, with its heart. Trust between two breaths. The stab of separation. The acid towards anyone who would dare try again, the same acid pushing Kenma towards his grave.

All Kenma wants to do was get his friend back, one of the few friends who believed in him. If Kuroo hadn’t gone off to the Demon King’s palace, he wouldn’t have to be here.

It would be simple to fall into the dark. Let it close in on him, like dropping onto a soft bed. Vanish quietly into smoke, like those lost in the academy that day.

Hinata bumped into him on the street when he was lost and accepted him without question. A kindness he has to repay. He needs to give Kuroo one of his best frowns when he drags him coat-first out of the Demon King’s castle.

He can’t do any of that if he’s dead. And he’s not going to be finished off by something as flimsy as a shadow.

Blood pounds against his ears as he forces his hands against the hazy mass. He draws strength from inside his bones, channeling magic into his arms. A burst of red light explodes in the clearing, scattering sunset across the trees and throwing the shadow away. Power sears his skin as he clamors for his staff, chanting unmusical syllables under his breath.

The shadow lunges again, but the light twists around it like thorny vines. It rages, bucking against the restraints and the glow of magic Kenma sends to chew at its core. _Leave_ , Kenma’s voice rings, steady and strong. _Leave!_

The restraints slice through the shadow, chopping it to pieces. It gurgles, fading as it falls, but even then its ruby eyes are on Iwaizumi. Only Iwaizumi.

Once the last tendril of the shadow fades, all the power Kenma had goes rushing back, leaving nothing but empty space. He wobbles, fighting for the surface. The cat-headed staff keeps him propped up, and a mirthless chuckle creeps from his throat.

 

* * *

 

Iwaizumi’s never looked better. Kenma sees his reflection once in his canteen and doesn’t look again. He pulls his hood further over his head and resolves to forget the whole thing.

It almost works until Iwaizumi comes up to him. The other three are browsing the market, so there’s no one to deflect. “Kageyama said you healed me.”

It feels like he’s poked at a secret too great. Kenma clutches his staff tighter. “No problem.”

“What did you do?”

“Do you feel any different?”

“It’s not bad-- I don’t know. I feel lighter, I guess? Kind of like taking off a full set of armor.” He rubs at his throat. “Still, it’s like something’s missing.”

“When you get to the Demon King,” Kenma asks, cutting away, “what are you going to do?”

Kenma looks into Iwaizumi’s face and the question answers itself. Oikawa is around even when the shadow isn’t. Loyalty immortal, Iwaizumi is going to stick with their party. He won’t stab them in the back. He’s going to keep searching. Still, Iwaizumi answers, “Punch him. Then tell him to stop all this stupidity.”

“I,” Kenma mumbles, “have a friend. Who also needs a good punch.”

Iwaizumi grins, knowing even in the unknown. “You do, huh? Tell me all about it.”


End file.
